I would rank this as the most intellectually satisfying of the books I read to complete my DO documentation. Beyond offering and basic understanding of who those Indo-Europeans were, Mallory presents a coherent and cohesive identity of the peoples. And I really like his flow charts. Mallory writes with academic authority, but also with a certain self-conscious humor. In describing some historians' Japhetistic portrayal of PIE folk as "perfesting their language and then bursting out all over the earth waving swords and spreading paradigms," (p. 22) he won my heart and I was prepared to accept most anything he chose to posit after. As an amatuer student of linguistics ( I had to take the course to get the English degrees), I appreciate the reverse look-up of language as a mode of mapping a long-dissapated people. I especially appreciate tracing the etymology of "fart,' both loudly and gently mind you, back to our PIE ancestors. It is for just such reasons that this is nerdy girl page-turner!

Beyond Mallory's judicious use of linguistics to discover the truth about the IE people stands his willingness to explore alternative theories in his own exploration. Were he to stick solely to linguistics, we would have a tiny pantheon indeed consisting primarily of a Sky father type of dubious progenitorship, possibly a thunderer, a spotted dog to guard the dead, and damp nephew. Not much upon which to reconstruct a religion. Instead Mallory embraces Dumezil's tripartite structure and discovers new connections in the language. Cross-training is difficult for many scholars, yet it makes the work emminently more accessable and relevant.

One nagging thought crept in as I read Mallory's interpretation of dualism within the tripartite structure though. He describes a mythology including a war between the first and second function gods against the third, ending with the agrarian-herders in a position of subservience. He then recounts the numerous instances of twins, or pairing within the first funtion realms. Yet, in Norse myth, the divine twins occur most notably among the Vanir, who are third function. Far be it from me to challange the work of academic and it is more than likely that my own understanding is flawed, but it just kept niggling at me as I read..

Mallory's conclusion that the expansion of the IE languages is still occuring and has already 'conquered' the majority of the globe gives one pause. Not because it is implausible, quite the contrary, because it seems so clear. Ultimately, we are attempting to emulate the religious practices of the people who took over the world. And gods help us, those people are us!

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